NEC develops Near Real-time RIC for high performance 5G vRAN

Japan’s NEC Corporation has developed a Near Real-time RAN Intelligent Controller (Near-RT RIC) platform and RIC applications that enable flexible and intelligent network control that is compliant with the O-RAN Alliance specifications for virtualized Radio Access Networks (vRAN).

In recent years, as the spread of cutting-edge technologies such as generative AI has progressed rapidly, there are high expectations for the provision of new user experiences that utilize these technologies. As the infrastructure that supports these experiences, 5G networks require high scalability and flexibility to effectively support new services, as well as mechanisms to efficiently operate existing services.

In order to provide an advanced 5G network that meets these requirements, NEC has developed a Near-RT RIC platform that enables flexible and intelligent network control in accordance with O-RAN Alliance specifications for vRAN and runs on general-purpose hardware, according to a media release.

This makes it possible to dynamically customize RAN (base station) settings according to service requirements and network conditions. Furthermore, as RIC applications that run on this platform, NEC has implemented functions for load balancing between cells, guaranteeing the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for slices, and achieving high reliability with acceptable latency.  

The Near-RT RIC developed by NEC can flexibly support functional enhancements such as quality improvement, SLA guarantees, and power saving by dynamically customizing RAN operations in response to diversifying service requirements by adding RIC applications such as load balancing between cells and SLA guarantee for slices, while emphasising high reliability with acceptable latency.